All Entries in the "Weight Loss Articles" Category

This article will be short because this advice is so absolute that I don’t need to go on and on about it.

In fact, I’m not passing-the-buck here.

Joining a gym and getting an exercise program for fat loss and toning is a great idea because the program can be customized specifically for you.

Nowadays, most gym instructors are highly qualified and able to give very good advice and solid recommendations for any body type to achieve the goals you’re after.

I’m going to provide you with a good foundation in this book but unfortunately I’m not able to visit you and design a program specifically for your body and goals.

By-the-way: during the early 1990s I was a gym instructor for several years and in the second half of the 1990s I completed a 4-year bachelors degree which covered human anatomy, bio-mechanics, bio-physiology, neuro-physiology and exercise rehab so I’m more than qualified to give advice.

GYM TIP: be sure you make it clear to the instructor you want to achieve your fat loss mostly through high intensity resistance training (HIRT) and not aerobic exercise!

Again, join a gym and enroll in a professionally-designed exercise program. It will be the best decision you’ve ever made!

The answer is, aerobic exercise is almost useless as a weight loss solution.

For many years we were told aerobic exercise is the key to weight loss but countless studies over the past 25 years have shown it’s not as effective as previously believed.

In fact, research has shown that aerobic exercise combined with a calorie restriction diet is only marginally more effective than a diet by itself. The slim improvement in results is definitely not worth the many hours of exertion if fat loss is your goal.

SIDE NOTE: Cardiovascular fitness is extremely important, meaning aerobic exercise is very beneficial to your health, so I’m definitely not saying you shouldn’t do it. I do cardio, but mostly for the benefit of improved cardiovascular fitness, not fat loss.

One hour on a treadmill will only burn about as many calories as you find in a couple pieces of fruit, which isn’t very much.

Pundits of aerobic exercise for weight loss say the real benefit comes from a raised BMR. That is, throughout the day and night your body burns more calories because your metabolism is running faster but studies have shown this also to be untrue.

Even after a 6 month program of aerobic exercise, subjects in one particular study were shown to have no increase in resting metabolic rate (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999).

Your EPOC from aerobic exercise is also substantially lower than for resistance exercise.

Relying solely on cardio training for fat loss, without including some resistance training can result in fat loss AND muscle loss. So your body composition (ratio of fat to muscle) may remain unchanged.

If you combine aerobic exercise with calorie restriction dieting without including some resistance training you will lose even more muscle mass.

So you can see, the classic program of:

Aerobic exercise and

Calorie restriction

…is a big no-no and a recipe for very unsatisfactory results despite all your hard work.

Why Resistance Training is Best for Weight Loss

Although there is conflicting research and opinions, it is generally accepted that muscle burns a lot of calories. Anywhere from 10 to 35 calories per kilogram of skeletal muscle (about 5 to 16 calories per pound) per day depending on whose research you go by.

So 2 extra kilograms of muscle mass means you burn up to an extra 2100 calories in a month. That’s equivalent to about half a pound of fat, just from an increased BMR. Might not sound like much, but that ½ pound of fat loss is not directly from exercise, instead it’s like bonus fat loss that is occurring 24/7 even while you sleep.

And of course the calories expended during a resistance training session and in the hours following as your body recovers (EPOC) equals even more calories.

But it gets even better…

Resistance training changes your body composition in a positive direction. Your body fat percentage will decrease, even if you have not lost any fat simply because you have more muscle mass. Much more likely however, you’ll build muscle AND lose fat simultaneously as a direct and indirect result of resistance training.

And there’s still more!..

Muscle stores glycogen (converted in the liver from glucose). The more glycogen you are able to store in your liver and muscle cells, the less glucose that will be converted to fat for storage as body fat.

In short, if you want to lose fat you need to build muscle.

High Intensity Resistance Training (HIRT): The King of Fat Loss Exercises

High Intensity Resistance Training (HIRT) has no equal when it comes to fat loss because:

A tremendous amount of calories are burned during a workout

EPOC can last for up to 38 hours, longer than any other type of exercise

Increases your BMR more than any other type of exercise

Decreases your body fat percentage more than any other type of exercise

If you are exercising for fat loss then the exercise you choose should do these 3 things:

Burn calories during exercise

Burn calories in the short-term post exercise (elevate your EPOC)

Burn calories in the long-term post exercise (elevate your BMR)

More on which type of exercise achieves all this in a moment, but first…

Why is EPOC Important for Fat Loss?

EPOC stands for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption. In short, a higher EPOC means more fat loss. It is a measurable increase in oxygen intake following strenuous exercise, which studies have shown can last up to 38 hours post workout (Schuenke MD, Mikat RP, McBride JM, European Journal of Applied Physiology in March 2002).

During recovery, excess oxygen is used in the processes that restore your body to a resting state and adapt it to the activity you just performed. These processes include: balancing your hormones, replenishing your body’s fuel stores, repairing cells and muscle growth.

Due to the many processes which result in EPOC, there is a resultant elevation in fuel consumption. Fat is broken down and free fatty acids (FFA) are released into the blood as a direct result of exercise. During recovery, the FFAs are oxidized as a fuel source and the unused FFA’s are converted back into fat stores, a process which also consumes calories.

What is BMR & Why Do I Want to Increase It?

It is the amount of energy your body consumes while at rest in normal climactic conditions (not super hot or cold). ‘At rest’ means your body literally is doing nothing, not even digesting food, therefore it cannot be reliably measured until 12 hours after you last meal. The higher your BMR the more calories you burn at all times of the day, therefore raising your BMR should be a goal of your fat loss program.

For many years it was believed aerobic exercise increases BMR but numerous studies from the past 25 years have shown that aerobic exercise has no impact at all.

14 Benefits of Exercise

I hope I’m preaching-to-the-choir when I tell you exercise is a MUST.

If you’re already convinced of the merits of exercise then skip ahead to the next blue heading, otherwise if you’re still unsure exercise is worth your time then read these scientifically proven benefits of exercise and how they relate to losing fat.

Exercise Helps You Lose Fat

Biochemistry 101: When you exercise you burn calories. And the more intense the exercise, the more calories you burn. Not just during, but after the exercise too.

The wonderful thing about losing weight is, the more weight you lose the easier it is to lose weight. We’ve already discovered in this book that by getting your weight under control, the many delicate systems at work in your body begin to function properly and simply due to this fact, maintaining your weight becomes much, much easier.

And exercise does not have to come solely from time specifically designated for exercise.

How about walking to the corner shop instead of driving

Or taking the stairs instead of the elevator

Or going for a walk instead of channel surfing for 20-minutes when there’s nothing to watch on TV? It all adds up.

Exercise Improves Your Mood

Exercise is known stimulate the release of brain chemicals like serotonin that increase feelings of happiness and calmness.

Knowing this it’s not surprising to hear exercise has also been shown to prevent and help-recovery from depression.

Compound these effects with an improved physical appearance and you have all the ingredients of Mind (self-image) and Spirit (self-esteem) for very successful weight loss when combined with proper diet.

Exercise Prevents Disease

Diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol… you name it, there are very few diseases and health issues of the human body that are not prevented or improved with regular exercise.

Increased number of mitochondria (energy making machine) in your muscle cells and much more.

So “I’m too tired to exercise” is a lame excuse. Sure it may be a little tough the first few times but your body will physiologically adapt and you will very literally have increased energy availability.

Personally I notice I begin feeling tired if I MISS workouts.

Bottom line is, increased energy levels means you have a faster metabolism and your body is burning more calories à result: fat loss!

TIP: some exercises are much better than others, more on that soon.

Exercise Improves Sleep Quality and Duration

Exercise has been long prescribed as a very effective tool to overcome insomnia and other sleeping disorders.

Not only does it help reduce stress, restlessness and nervousness, it also causes a higher body temperature peak. The importance of a higher peak is when you get into bed, your body temp will fall deeper and faster than if you hadn’t exercised….

Bottom line is you sleep deeper with fewer interruptions.

But don’t exercise too close to bed time because it takes several hours for your body temp to come down far enough for a good night’s rest.

The great thing about consistent good sleep is fat loss becomes much easier. For me personally, improving my sleep patterns and getting more rest was one of the most powerful things I did to get rid of my fat.

Even More Benefits

I could go on and on about the benefits of exercise and how they directly or indirectly lead to fat loss, but I think you get the picture, I’ll list a few more benefits of exercise quickly which specifically improve your appearance:

Improved muscle tone

Improved posture

Improved flexibility

Improved complexion

Improved skin tone

Reduced varicose veins

Increased muscle mass

Improved body composition (muscle to fat ratio)

Reduced body measurements

And more!

With all these wonderful benefits of exercise, do you really need any more convincing to do it? If you want to lose weight, exercise is needed, and that’s all she wrote.

That’s really it in a nutshell, but it’s not enough. So I created a list of principles which I follow very closely to maintain my ultra-lean body easily at 40 years old.

I live by these commandments and I suggest you adopt them to. There is nothing crazy or outrageous, it is just sensible decision making based on what science has shown about the way our bodies use and react to the foods we eat.

So print this out and place it on the refrigerator….

These are the basic principles for you to follow.

Just by following these commandments, I’m able to maintain an ultra-healthy body and still eat of a lot of food I thoroughly enjoy.

Stop eating when you’re full

Spread your food over at least 5 meals (preferably 6 or more) a day because your insulin and energy levels will remain stable and digestion will be better. If you eat 5 meals, that’s about 1 meal every 3 hours you’re awake

Consume ultra-high nutrient food because the higher the nutritional value of the food, the fewer calories your body will crave. Best sources are fresh, in season, locally grown fruits and vegetables and foods from pasture grazing, free range livestock and fish

Make sure at least 50% of your fruits and vegetable are eaten raw because processing (including cooking) destroys some of the vitamins, antioxidants and phytochemicals. Salads without croutons, ranch type dressing or bacon bits, are a great way to get raw vegetables

Prepare your meals at home (doesn’t mean you don’t have to eat them at home). The more you eat out the more likely you are to eat the wrong foods. I understand it SEEMS convenient to eat out but there is nothing convenient about obesity, diabetes and heart disease

Eat all or most of your starchy carbs (breads, pasta, rice, potatoes etc) in the first 2 thirds of the day because they have a higher glycemic load (GL) and the resultant insulin spike while you’re sleeping and not using blood glucose for energy will increase fat accumulation

Don’t eat refined starchy carbs like white bread (and other white flour products), white rice, white pasta etc because most of the fiber and nutrient content has been removed leaving a high GL/low nutrient food that will spike your insulin levels without providing much else

Go easy on the condiments because ketchup is loaded with HFCS and most other sauces like ranch are high in sugar & saturated fats. Instead try yogurt, cottage cheese, mashed avocado, lemon juice, vinegar or no condiment all

Eat foods high in fiber because fiber reduces the GL of the food, contains calories that are bio-unavailable, reduces LDL cholesterol levels, swells in your digestive tract to reduce appetite and provides an ideal environment in your colon for good bacteria to flourish

Try to eat some protein with every meal if possible because protein signals your body to secrete hormones like cholecystokinin, which act to suppress your appetite

Always eat some protein at breakfast time because you’ll have less appetite for the rest of the day

Avoid foods containing obesogens (it’s difficult to avoid them 100%) because studies have already proved they cause infant obesity and we may only be a few studies away from discovering they cause obesity in adults too

The word diet has come to mean “a magical eating formula that will transform your body in no time with no effort”. I’m being contrite, but I’ve no doubt you know what I mean.

Interestingly, the word diet comes from Greek and means “a manner of living” or “a way of life”, which is really how it should be treated today.

But given the abundance of strong emotion regarding weight, thinness and attractiveness in our consumerist society, it’s not surprising marketers have found it easy to sell the “diet” concept as a pot-of-gold at the end of a magic rainbow.

In reality, it has to be “a way of life” if you are going to sustain your results. And it has to be a “manner of living” if you are to achieve your results in the first place.

Meaning, don’t design a diet of nothing but cabbage soup because you will never be able to incorporate nothing but cabbage soup as a “way of life” (the Cabbage-Soup Diet is a real thing, I didn’t just make that up!).

You need real food, that you can eat every day for the rest of your life to first achieve dramatic weight loss and then maintain your ideal weight.

It’s not as difficult as you may think. But it does require a commitment to eating healthy, real foods like those in the chart above.

Can you ever enjoy a pizza again? Of course you can, I do.

And I don’t mean some kind of “healthy-pizza”… I mean good-ol’ Italian pizza with cheese.

But I don’t do it often.

Most of my meals are made from real, unprocessed, highly nutritious foods. And I love my meals.

Not because I’m some kind of health-nut but because they taste great. Full of juice, texture, flavor AND life. Yes life, the living essence of natural foods which is sadly snuffed-out during processed food manufacturing.

How to Choose Which Foods To Eat

Choosing the right foods is half the battle. Even if you persist with other bad eating habits like over eating, skipping meals or eating late at night, you can still lose a lot of weight by eating the right foods.

Now I didn’t just give you permission to continue with those bad habits, I’m just making a point. If you get rid of those other bad eating habits AND eat the right foods your results will be amazing… I’m living proof of that.

We’ve already discussed briefly which foods you should keep in your pantry and which you should toss in the trash (or preferably donate to a soup kitchen), now let’s get more specific.

We know from the Eating Commandments that you should aim for foods which have high nutrition and low glycemic load (GL).

Say “No” to Dieting Gimmicks

There are ‘spike’ diets, ‘reward and reinforce’ diets, ‘metabolic typing’ diets and much more but all these philosophies have elements I’m just too uncomfortable with.

The benefit of using of these ‘gimmicks’ is it’s great for your marketing. You can say it’s a ‘revolutionary’ new way to eat that will strip your body down and so on. And the companies selling these diets use that ‘uniqueness’ as one of their key selling points…

… but that’s just the problem. I feel these eating philosophies are included not because they will be of the greatest benefit to you but more because it makes the product so much easier to sell.

Most Fad Diets Have No Supporting Scientific Evidence

There is just too much scientific evidence placing doubt over there efficacy. In fact most of the biggest fad diets are completely lacking in scientific evidence and there is even evidence showing they cause health complications and can be downright dangerous.

Most Fad Diets Are Not Sustainable

Here is what makes me most uncomfortable of all… these eating philosophies are not sustainable. That is, it is very unlikely you’ll keep eating that way forever because of the effort it takes and their impractical design.

Eating should be a wonderful event that you enjoy without too much hassle about how you do it. For example, eating mostly meats and fats which some diets recommend is not only unhealthy it’s also a depriving you of so much of the wonderful palette of food choices nature offers.

And what about a diet where you eat less than you want for 2 days and then only eat enough to be satisfied on the third day? Is that the way you want to eat for the rest of your life? I’m betting your answer is “No way!”

I agree with you, I couldn’t eat that way forever and I would never expect anyone else to.

So the question begs:

“What do I do after I stop eating according to these gimmicky dieting philosophies?”

Sadly, all these fad diets have no answer for you. The inevitability is, if you did manage to lose any weight, you’re going to put it all back on again if you don’t have an eating philosophy you can maintain for the rest of your life.

And that fact is more than amply supported by mountains of evidence proving successful long-term weight loss is extremely rare.

I can honestly say I achieved my results WITHOUT EVER tracking calories, however, it doesn’t mean I’m not mindful of how many calories certain foods contain. For example, I don’t eat potato chips because I know they are packed with empty calories.

What’s needed is a system that keeps calories under check without the necessity to count them every meal… or ever.

A New “Food” Axiom

When choosing a meal in the past, you’ve most likely limited your internal questions about food as to this:

“Does this food look and taste good?”

Instead, make it your habit to include the impact the food choice will have on your health by asking this:

“Is this a healthy food, will it benefit my body, can my body digest it easily AND does it taste good?”

This one simple change can make a world of difference in your waistline, but of course it all depends on your self-honesty and willingness.

Are you up to the challenge? I think so.

First things first…

Before we design your meals, you need to find time to eat. I know it sounds obvious but it’s very important because too many people are skipping breakfast, eating only 2-3 meals per day or scoffing down meals on the run.

That’s the wrong way to do it.

For optimum management of your energy levels and insulin levels, you should be eating at least 6 meals per day, certainly no less than 5. I personally eat 6-8 meals per day.

Why eat to manage your energy and insulin levels you may ask? Well, because that is a central key to controlling fat accumulation. Hopefully you read the earlier sections about insulin and know what I’m talking about. If not I suggest you go review that section.

Now as I was saying… I don’t make 8 separate meals, instead, for some of my meals I’ll make a large serving and eat half now, then eat the other half a couple of hours later.

Why?

Because by breaking a meal into 2 meals:

I save time by not needing to make another meal AND

By splitting the nutrients over 2 meals spread across a few hours my insulin levels are more stable and if you’ve chosen your food carefully (foods with a low GL), the glucose is not stored as fat but instead utilized as energy.

My Eating Schedule

Here’s a sample eating schedule for my typical day:

7:00am – First half of breakfast

8:00am– Second half of breakfast

9:30am – Morning Snack

12:00noon – First half of lunch

2:00pm – Second half of lunch

5:00pm – Afternoon snack

7:00pm – Dinner

8:30pm – Small snack

A Sample Eating Schedule

You may find it easier to follow a plan of 3 main meals and 2-3 snack meals in a day.

Such a plan would look like this:

7:00am – Breakfast

10:00am– Snack

1:00pm – Lunch

3:00pm – Snack

6:00pm – Dinner

9:00pm – Snack

The Two Most Important Meals of the Day

There are 2 meals which should NEVER be skipped.

Breakfast: Never skip brekky because after a 9-hour fast, your body needs wholesome food to top up your micronutrient levels and bring your blood-glucose back into the stable range.

If you don’t eat until lunch, glucogen and blood glucose levels will become so low that your body will begin breaking muscle tissue for conversion to glucose as an energy source à that’s bad news for fat loss

Post-workout meal: this meal is ultra-important because for a period of 30-40 minutes post-workout, your body has increased capacity to absorb nutrients necessary to minimize muscle catabolism (muscle breakdown), reduce recovery time and build muscle mass.

You benefit most from a meal of simple carbs and easily assimilated protein so a whey protein shake with sweet fruit (bananas, pineapple, mango) is ideal. Keep fat content low because getting the nutrients into your body quickly is important in the post-workout meal and fats will slow that process down.

The more efficient your eating schedule, the faster you lose weight. With such a simple concept making such a big difference, why not try it and watch the pounds just fall away?

Hydrogenated vegetable oils occur nowhere in nature but they are added to foods because they have a long shelf life, give food a creamy texture and are extremely cheap which achieves the ultimate business objective of increased profits.

They are created through a process called hydrogenation which changes naturally occurring liquid vegetable oils to solid vegetable fat.

Throw out foods that have sugar (or other sweetener) listed in the first 4 ingredients

Throw out foods made with white flour

Throw out foods made with white corn flour

Throw out your white rice

Throw out foods containing artificial sweeteners

Throw out foods containing processed soy products, especially soy oil

Throw out foods containing high fructose corn syrup

Throw out foods containing lots of additives

Throw out foods high in saturated fats

Throw out any highly processed foods

If you’re brave enough to really get this food out of your house (I hope you are), then of course don’t throw it in the trash, instead donate it to a shelter or other organization that could use it… even just your neighbor.

If you just can’t part with it, then pack it into boxes and store out of the way to remove the ‘convenience’ factor and hopefully your willpower will be strong enough to resist the urge to unpack them.